Generally speaking, conventional electronic messaging systems, such as email, text messaging, instant messaging, calendar invitations or social media postings, are very limited in their ability to send electronic messages with “blind distribution lists” where the visibility of recipients on a distribution list can be easily configured by the sender of the electronic message. For example, in conventional electronic messaging systems (using email as an example), a sender can send electronic messages to recipients using the “to:” and “cc:” (i.e. carbon copy or courtesy copy) fields. The “to:” and “cc:” functionalities enable all recipients of the email to see all of the names, identities and email addresses of other recipients of that email. For example, referring to FIG. 2, when an electronic message 201 is sent by a sender 204 with distribution group 202A, distribution group 202B, and distribution group 202C in the “to:” field, the resultant electronic message allows the recipients of distribution groups 202A-202C be visible to each other in a pool of all recipients 205. Unfortunately, those that receive the electronic message 201 also gain access to valuable data (for example, email lists, client lists, or other electronic messaging distribution groups). Conventional electronic messaging systems also provide for messages with recipients listed in the “blind carbon copy” (also known as “BCC”) field. However, blind carbon copy prevents the email recipients from seeing the names, identities or email addresses of other recipients in the electronic message. For example, in FIG. 3, a user 304 sends an electronic message 301 with distribution group 302A, distribution group 302B and distribution group 302C listed in the “BCC” field. The resultant electronic message 301 appears to be individually addressed to each individual recipient 305A-C, 306A-B and 307 A-D, without any information about other recipients to the electronic message. Blind carbon copy prevents people within the same organization or the same electronic messaging distribution group from seeing others within their organization or distribution group who received the same electronic message. Blind carbon copy, thus, prevents initiating an intra-organization or intra-distribution group dialogue related to a given email.
Alternatively, a separate electronic message can be sent by a user to each individual receiving company, each using a separate distribution group containing a list of recipients (e.g. names, identities and email addresses). However, as seen in FIG. 4, this results in multiple electronic messages 401A-C being sent to the separate distribution groups (e.g. Groups A-C) for the same message. This is particularly cumbersome for calendar invites (e.g. for a meeting, teleconference, or other event), where the initiator of the meeting would have to maintain multiple calendar entries for each organization that has invitees to the meeting event. Not only is this system confusing, but it is also cumbersome, non-productive and highly inefficient.
It is desirable to have an electronic messaging system which simplifies the process of sending electronic messages to different distribution groups and controlling the visibility of recipients in each distribution group.